


Night of Echoes

by Entomancy



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: AU, Endverse, Gen, Scarring, Tekkit, Trousers of Time, Voltz, Yoglabs, divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:04:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2119566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entomancy/pseuds/Entomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bit self-indulgent - short fics, considering how the Yogs from my different series' legs of the Trousers of Time would view each other. So it rather helps if you're familiar with them!</p><p>First up - Zephos (Divergence AU version of Xephos).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night of Echoes

If there is one thing that scholars can agree on about the nature of Minecraftia, it is that it is a world in flux. So many elements have cycles, beyond the diurnal; magic, in particular, is prone to shift and twist, sometimes wearily suggested to do that on  _purpose_ whenever anyone gets too close to its understanding. Whole realms may appear as quick as thought, breaking doorways through stone and water and flame; yet others retreat, vanishing into history with no warning as abruptly as they appeared.

In a world where the rules can change so suddenly, there is a comfort to be taken in the general, reliable linearity of _time_. Tomorrow pretty much always follows today, and while rare moments of true prophecy can offer glimpses of what may play out, the future itself remains – for the most part – fairly stable. Effect follows cause, even if the nature of that can be on the varied side, and actions have consequences.

Choices matter. In the greater scheme of things not _all_ of them actually matter all that much, but some do. Some really, really do.

Predicting which were the important ones, even after the fact, is tricky. The world is how it is now, because of what has happened then. Extrapolating to another string of history – another weave in the tapestry of fate, to see how change and chance might have chased each other differently – is beyond most minds to even fathom the depth of the _question_ , let alone take steps to work out what may have happened.

But sometimes – just sometimes – there might be a way to see what _did._

-

The testificates have a word for it (although lacking the peculiarities of their vocal apparatus, it is impossible for humans to actually pronounce); this very particular alignment of stars and sky that heralds a specific time in that eclectic calendar. If there was a translation to be made, it would be **night of echoes**. The walls between worlds are already thin here, but this night they seem almost as glass, to any that may care to look.

Deliberately or otherwise.

-

Zephos does not sleep. Not in any way that he might once have thought of it, at least; walking the twisting labyrinth of the Yoglabs corridors, to be _seen_ , smiling and sharp and ever, ever present. He has his own projects, of course, to occupy him – and the endless sea of paperwork that the Labs produces, a rising tide that spills from files and folders like bleached blood.

And there were those projects that had no papers, no instructions, just whispers and clinical delegation in windowless rooms deep beneath the earth. Sometimes, he fancied that the whole edifice was some huge, white-bright beast that had risen up to engulf him, extending its clean-steel claws deep into his burning soul, even as it stretched further and further into the world around it. Yet it was a means to an end; nothing more.

But not his own end. Never his own, not for so long now.

Still, sometimes he dreamed. As the uniform corridors blurred together, in the slow times when even his soft-smiling presence could speed nothing more against the play of time and physics, or when the searing press of incepted will lessened for its own reasons, and his mind wandered.

_Where is this?_

It is as though his awareness is suddenly hanging in the air, a disembodied point of reference so far away from the body that he can still feel, but which is distant to him now. The room is unfamiliar –carpeted, with white-and-grey walls of carved stone littered with imperfections; lit from above by the moonlight drifting in through windows set high into the ceiling, and by the still-glowing stumps of wooden torches held in iron brackets.

There is a bed set against one wall, a crude thing in oak and thick-spun wool, and a pair lie sleeping in the half-slipped sheets. One, a woman, blonde and broad and sun-flecked, is unfamiliar – but the man asleep against her, one of her arms curled across his shoulders, he knows well.

It is him.

Shock isn't an emotion Zephos has felt for some time, and even now it is back somewhere with his body, so far from this strange scene, but he does feel it. The first thoughts are rapid, and dismissed as quickly as they come. Clone? No, he has always kept very tight control over any use of that technology, and besides, he can _sense_ those. Android? Again, none missing, none unaccounted for. This is no copy; he knows that, somehow.

It is _him_ , but somewhere else.

There is fascination, now, as his attention traces down his double's features. Now he looks, _really_ looks, the man in the bed is far from an exact reflection. He looks older, almost, or more worn, with flecks of grey starting to show in his hair and beard. There are darker circles under his eyes, faint but dug deep, and the hand that rests flat against the woman's arm is thickened slightly, calloused from blade and tools. Workman's hands.

He used to have hands like that. Somewhere else, Zephos feels his own fingers – smoother, narrower, subtly reworked into a more vicious elegance as the whole of him has been – tighten just a little. This is not his past, though; this is another's _now_ \- but as his attention tracks down, past the overgrowing edge of beard, he can see with a sudden certainty that they share as little history as they do a present.

There are a few thin white marks on the man's face, against his neck, but the scars start in earnest just below his collar-line. Zephos has seen scarring, and understands so, _so,_ well how bodies respond to all manner of hurt, but the _extent_ of the tangled dermal tapestry is surprising. As was the variety in it. Raised, sunken, sharp, ragged, the shine-smooth of old burns and stranger-still twists of skin that even he could not recognise; they stretched down the man's body like a narrative wrought in flesh.

 _He_ had been scarred, once. Before the Labs, before… everything, in those odd early days when it had just been him and Honeydew and their own wandering footsteps, and adventuring took its price in luck and blood quickly enough – but never like this.

_Where is this? What life have you led?_

Zephos' attention shifts, tracking around the room, and there is a mounting urgency to the search as he scans again and again. Looking for… looking for any hint…?

But there are no Lab logos. No branding, anywhere, no glimmer or edge of that so-familiar sign that is all but carved on his heart, just crude wood and metal and fabric – and all at once, so suddenly, he _hates_ him.

There are no Labs here. None of it. This ragged facsimile, this cut-up copy that has never hung on the edge of howling oblivion, numb fingers dug into shaking, breaking stone – never seen dark-eyed salvation turn so completely back against him, misunderstanding and murder merging at the edges – never been bound and bled and screaming out his own unmaking, in the gilden furnace of another's will.

He is none of it. All of it. Mortal and free and imperfect, and everything _he_ is not.

The image is fading now, as the edges of that damned room begin to go fuzzy, and Zephos wants to scream with a throat that will not obey him even if he could try. Beneath, wrapped so snugly in a fading vision, the man stirs and eyes like paired diamonds open in the darkness to meet his own.

There is shock, there in that heartbeat-fragment of time before true waking, and he _sees_ him, held between seconds just before the vision breaks.

Then the world is clinical-white again and Zephos jerks, drawing a sharp breath from old habit rather than necessity, and swings around, searching for any witness to that strange moment. The canteen is as empty as it was before. He looks down, to where his own – true – reflection stares back at him from the dark surface of his probably-coffee, and his eyes narrow.

Maybe it was a dream – but it has been so long since he dreamed. And Section Eight has been putting in a lot of funding requests recently, wanting to re-start the old Dimension Doors programme. It is madness, but it's the interesting kind, and he had been meaning to have a more detailed look at the proposal for a while now.

Maybe. Just maybe…

-


End file.
